Rejection Sensitivity
Season Two: Episode Two: Rejection Sensitivity
Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash
Released: January 14, 2025
Transcript:
**Upbeat Music** Welcome to Hyperfixing with Cate. I’m your host, Cate North. Join me today as we dive into yet another amazing hyperfixation. **Upbeat Music**
Hello
I feel wildly uncomfortable. Like, sick to my stomach, my skin itches and I want to hide. The thing is I haven’t even done anything. I’m just thinking about doing something where I could get it wrong or be rejected. Honestly, I really want to cry, and I feel really silly.
Ok, uh, let’s back up a little bit. I’m reading a book, Powered by ADHD. I’m like 3 pages in. Ok, I’m further than that but I just started the book. As everyone else in the world this time of year I am putting together goals, hopes, dreams and wishes for the upcoming year. I have many but one of them is working on my mental health. While talking to my…counselor? She actually recommended that I actually take steps to get myself an official assessment. That’s…scary. And annoying and has lots of barriers of entry for me. So, anyway, and honestly we just talked about this a couple days ago. A couple of years ago I was taking a seminar about goal setting. This particular style was for S.M.A.R.T. goals. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound) I remember one of the steps was to break your one main goal into smaller goals and then break that down into steps. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So, I’m still working on all of these steps but I’m easily distracted and this takes a whole lot of concentration, time and work. So I know that eventually one of my tasks will be research, and I know that one of those steps will be reading books about the topic. Well I like reading and I could only find one book on Libby that was available without a wait. So the book was chosen for me. And since everything is always working out for me I took it as a sign and immediately ish started reading it. Well, then it was bedtime and then multiple days later I remembered I was reading this book. My daughter is at a birthday party, seems like the perfect time to start reading it again. So, now we are back to present time.
I get to the section about rejection sensitivity, I know I have this. There is no doubt in my mind. Any feedback that I have ever received feels like a very personal attack and reflection of my incapabilities and that I am doing something wrong. So, anyway, it talks about visualizing that experience and I almost immediately started feeling nauseous, itchy, I don’t know how else to explain it, I just, I feel like my skin is too tight and there’s stuff crawling all over me and I want to cry. It then goes on to talk about how practicing rejection is really good for this. You’ll learn many things. One being that oftentimes you won’t actually be rejected and two you can and will survive being rejected and hopefully you’ll realize it’s not that bad. Then you just keep doing it over and over again and realize you’ll survive. So this idea, obviously needed to become a podcast episode but also I’m not actually sure if I’ll ever record these and post them so it didn’t actually feel like it would count. So then I came up with the bright idea that I would post a tiktok. Right? Cause why not? It’s all the things that make me feel awful but won’t actually hurt me. Strangers will perceive me. I’ll do a horrible job. I’ll fail and no one will care. Worse, I’ll succeed. And then I’ll have expectations. It’s just all around yucky. But also something that I secretly kind of want to work out for me. I just want to not feel alone and let other people not feel alone and let all of us know that we’re ok and not weird. Well, we are weird but that’s ok. And beautiful. I always tell my children, everybody’s weird and if you're not weird and 100% completely normal that is really freaking weird. So we celebrate weird around here. I want to build or be part of an already existing community. Could I do this with people I already know? Maybe. Does it somehow feel slightly safer to try with people I don’t know? For some reason, yes it kind of does.
So, I’m sitting here in my vehicle waiting for this birthday party to get over and on impulse I’ve forced myself to make a vulnerable post and actually hit the publish button. Technically this app is supposed to be banned in just a few days. What’s the worst that could happen?
So, now we’re onto another famous saying of mine, people always say what’s the worst that can happen, they say no? Well, to that, I always say if you think that the worst thing could be a no then you lack imagination. So, I’m sitting here, writing notes, a script? for this podcast episode that I want to publish. I’ve made the horribly awkward video, I’ve pushed publish. I mean I could always delete it later if I want, pretend like it never even happened. I’ve closed down the app and I am pretending like it never happened. Almost immediately, I get a like notification. Crap! I’ve been perceived. And I’ve been forced to know. Okay, no big deal, keep ignoring the app, pretend like it didn’t happen. It’s a fresh post, TikTok’s going to push it out to see if people watch it. It’s cool. No one will, then TikTok will stop pushing it out. What’s the worst that could happen? A couple of people see it? Wrong! Wrong Cate. Wrong! You forgot to use your imagination; you just received a notification that your aunt is now following you. Hehaha, ugh. Not only have I been perceived, but my family found me and people I know know what I’ve done. This is far far worse.
**Upbeat Music** Thank you for joining me today on Hyperfixing with Cate. I hope to see you again next week where we explore the delectable world of yet another hyperfixation. If you enjoyed today’s show I would love it if you subscribed to the podcast. Don’t forget to check out the links and resources in the show notes. Today’s music was brought to you by Sound Gallery by Dimitri Taras. And until next time don’t forget to keep your heart and mind open. **Upbeat Music**